Speaking of UO items at the Origin Store...

Out of curiosity, I went to the Origin Store to see what all items were actually available. As a returning player with a brand new account, both the Advanced Character and the Mythic Character tokens caught my attention. I clicked the 'quick view' and 'read more' to get the details. The advanced character info left a lot to be desired as it didn't give details as to which templates were available. I had to google that info.
The Mythic token lets me make a character with a 5x90 character with maxed stats. Which is fine, I guess, if it weren't for the fact that, outside of being on sale for 50% off, costs $25. For $25 I think I should be given 720 points so I can put them where I want. Just like the stats. If I have used the proper PS's, I should be able to have an instant 6x120 character ready to go.

The Advanced Character token that allows you to select from a preset menu of templates leaves me scratching my head. When were these templates created? Pre-AoS? Most seem very dated and other templates have skills that really don't belong, in my opinion. Blacksmith...mage, anyone?

Stratics VeteranAlumni

no...you should be able to eat a token and instantly have any 6 skills you want at 120.
As it is you can use one on multiple characters ....and with a friendly imbuer, create a legendary tamer in a manner of moments. Training skills is really easy now with the exception of a few classes...we dont need more instant characters

Let me first say that when Advanced Character tokens came out I thought they were one of the worst additions to UO to date. I took a lot of pride in the fact that I had some 7x GM toons because back then that was ALOT of work.

Alas, that ship has sailed. I have to go with the OP here. Advanced Character tokens are massively outdated. Mythic tokens were a great step forward, letting you customize for just the skills and stats you want. But today's UO is not really the same UO as it was back in 1998. Fewer and fewer players have any interest in gaining skills through normal game play... heck some skills gain methods are so outdated that you can't actually gain your skill through normal play (example: taming). I would wager 95% of new character creation is coming from existing vet accounts. And while I am sure there are some of them that enjoy getting out there and training characters, I'm also willing to wager that most are looking to power train up the skills to get out and play. I mean really... How many times does one really want to train 120 spellweaving? So why not let players get a token that lets you allocate 720 points any way they want (provided they have the appropriate powerscrolls)? How does it impact game play? Fewer people standing at Luna bank casting WOD on a horse or abusing a poor wolf spider? If players have the scrolls and are willing to pay $ to have a ready made character, more power to them... It just means more actual playtime IMO.

GovernorStratics VeteranCampaign Supporter

I'd be for such token if it let me allocate the 720 points as I please, giving each skill I wanted the amount of points I needed there, as long as I had the proper powerscrolls (if needed).
I would like the mythic character token if it let me allocate the 450 points as I wanted as well, instead of having to be limited to picking 5 skills at 90. It would deliver more bang for it's bucks if you could use those 450 points to start with say 120 swords, 120 tactics, 120 chiv, 90 bushido or something the like.

While we are at it, I would also like to see a new "class" of character.

Artisan Token - Use this token to transform your character into one of Sosaria's most dedicated artisans. This token may be used to permanently alter your character. The current skill cap of 720 would be removed, but the list of skills available would be limited as follow:

Well if we are going to dream about the perfect token then I'd like a token like this:

Beast Master

Set Taming, Lore and Vet to 120, and you can chose whatever other skills you want up to 720, also gives you the 250 stats... and in addition the following pets all fully trained:
1 Greater Dragon 5.0 All max stats and 1000 to 1200 hp
2 Dread Warhorse 4.5 or greater
3 Rune Beetle 4.5 or greater with at least 150 poisoning
4 Bake Kitsune 4.5 or greater so you can pair it with the dread or beetle and rock fel
5 Blaze CuSidhe 4.5 or greater
6 Pure WW 5.0 for styling
7 New Abysal colored Hiryu So it can look cool even if in the EC it looks like a plucked chicken with a dog head.
8 Nightmare 4.5 or greater
9 Unicorn or Kirin depending on the sex of your character 4.5 or greater
10 Bane Dragon 4.5 or greater

Stratics Veteran

I think that the power scrolls should be included in the mythic token, you should be able to assign 720 skill points and the stat points however you like.
I have trouble buying the scrolls I need to finish off a character.
Most of the 120 scrolls are purchased from 3rd party sites, and I wouldn't do that.

I think that the power scrolls should be included in the mythic token, you should be able to assign 720 skill points and the stat points however you like.
I have trouble buying the scrolls I need to finish off a character.
Most of the 120 scrolls are purchased from 3rd party sites, and I wouldn't do that.

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While I appreciate the sentiment, the ability to bypass the need for ingame scrolls is a bad idea IMO. They are about the only thing that makes any of the Fel content relevant. Personally, if you can't get the scrolls you prolly need to invest some more time playing before you are "worthy" of having an insta-made character. (I still think players should have to put in at least a little ingame effort before they get a maxed out skill character and I think acquiring power scrolls are perfect for that).

Well if we are going to dream about the perfect token then I'd like a token like this:

Beast Master

Set Taming, Lore and Vet to 120, and you can chose whatever other skills you want up to 720, also gives you the 250 stats... and in addition the following pets all fully trained:
1 Greater Dragon 5.0 All max stats and 1000 to 1200 hp
2 Dread Warhorse 4.5 or greater
3 Rune Beetle 4.5 or greater with at least 150 poisoning
4 Bake Kitsune 4.5 or greater so you can pair it with the dread or beetle and rock fel
5 Blaze CuSidhe 4.5 or greater
6 Pure WW 5.0 for styling
7 New Abysal colored Hiryu So it can look cool even if in the EC it looks like a plucked chicken with a dog head.
8 Nightmare 4.5 or greater
9 Unicorn or Kirin depending on the sex of your character 4.5 or greater
10 Bane Dragon 4.5 or greater

Plus it gives you 50 stable slots!

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All sounds good to me... But in truth if the just sold:

Pet boarding token. Increases character stable slots to 50. May only be used once per character.

Governor

Well if we are going to dream about the perfect token then I'd like a token like this:

Beast Master

Set Taming, Lore and Vet to 120, and you can chose whatever other skills you want up to 720, also gives you the 250 stats... and in addition the following pets all fully trained:
1 Greater Dragon 5.0 All max stats and 1000 to 1200 hp
2 Dread Warhorse 4.5 or greater
3 Rune Beetle 4.5 or greater with at least 150 poisoning
4 Bake Kitsune 4.5 or greater so you can pair it with the dread or beetle and rock fel
5 Blaze CuSidhe 4.5 or greater
6 Pure WW 5.0 for styling
7 New Abysal colored Hiryu So it can look cool even if in the EC it looks like a plucked chicken with a dog head.
8 Nightmare 4.5 or greater
9 Unicorn or Kirin depending on the sex of your character 4.5 or greater
10 Bane Dragon 4.5 or greater

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

Well if we are going to dream about the perfect token then I'd like a token like this:

Beast Master

Set Taming, Lore and Vet to 120, and you can chose whatever other skills you want up to 720, also gives you the 250 stats... and in addition the following pets all fully trained:
1 Greater Dragon 5.0 All max stats and 1000 to 1200 hp
2 Dread Warhorse 4.5 or greater
3 Rune Beetle 4.5 or greater with at least 150 poisoning
4 Bake Kitsune 4.5 or greater so you can pair it with the dread or beetle and rock fel
5 Blaze CuSidhe 4.5 or greater
6 Pure WW 5.0 for styling
7 New Abysal colored Hiryu So it can look cool even if in the EC it looks like a plucked chicken with a dog head.
8 Nightmare 4.5 or greater
9 Unicorn or Kirin depending on the sex of your character 4.5 or greater
10 Bane Dragon 4.5 or greater

The cost for such a token, one that gave someone instant 720 skills to allocate as one pleases, should cost an astronomically high amount of money.

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I'm curious what price point you think would be fair and why. I was thinking $39.99 and would require you to obtain scrolls ingame to allocate over 100. In my mind that is roughly 4 months worth of sub fees, which seems a fair trade.
Certainly I think if you include the ability to bypass the ingame scroll requirement it should cost more, but I'm not really sure what I think would be fair for that. (Honestly I don't think it should even be an option at any price)

Governor

In an incident relating to Origin, I had a HORRIBLE experience today. I Bought a housing and bank storage upgrade, and an undertaker staff. The code for the storage went through great. BUT when I cut and pasted the code for the undertaker staff the message popped up "invalid code". After trying several times, both cut and paste and manually, I managed to get someone in chat. After about an HOUR in chat with Origin, nothing was resolved. When I eventually asked for a new code to try I was told that they don't access to codes. LOL. I was even given a link to download Origin, even though I was ON THE WEBSITE AT THE TIME. But I figured WTH and tried it. The link given to me by the chat person WAS NO GOOD! I got the "error 404" message. FINALLY I was given a link to broadsword.com, and was told that THEY could for sure help fix the problem. What a load of crap! I finally asked enough times that the chat person said they would refund my money. We shall see. They sure make it hard to give them money.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

In an incident relating to Origin, I had a HORRIBLE experience today. I Bought a housing and bank storage upgrade, and an undertaker staff. The code for the storage went through great. BUT when I cut and pasted the code for the undertaker staff the message popped up "invalid code". After trying several times, both cut and paste and manually, I managed to get someone in chat. After about an HOUR in chat with Origin, nothing was resolved. When I eventually asked for a new code to try I was told that they don't access to codes. LOL. I was even given a link to download Origin, even though I was ON THE WEBSITE AT THE TIME. But I figured WTH and tried it. The link given to me by the chat person WAS NO GOOD! I got the "error 404" message. FINALLY I was given a link to broadsword.com, and was told that THEY could for sure help fix the problem. What a load of crap! I finally asked enough times that the chat person said they would refund my money. We shall see. They sure make it hard to give them money.

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May sound simple....but I had a problem similar to this once.....I had left a single ( unnoticeable) space in front of the code.....retry and make sure you hit backspace a couple times before you paste the code...

Governor

May sound simple....but I had a problem similar to this once.....I had left a single ( unnoticeable) space in front of the code.....retry and make sure you hit backspace a couple times before you paste the code...

OR...now stay with me here, I'm going out on a limb....you could...actually play the game.

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So you are suggesting that there is some inherent value to playing to work skill over playing with a fully skilled character? Or are you suggesting that people would purchase such a token to create a character that they would then not play?

Then someone has a serious issue... $700 at today's gold prices is easily 3.5 billion. Considering you can get the mythic token for 90 million or less, the value of the remaining skills is 3.4 billion... Not a chance. That is over 12 million per point of skill.

ProfessionalCampaign Patron

So you are suggesting that there is some inherent value to playing to work skill over playing with a fully skilled character? Or are you suggesting that people would purchase such a token to create a character that they would then not play?

Then someone has a serious issue... $700 at today's gold prices is easily 3.5 billion. Considering you can get the mythic token for 90 million or less, the value of the remaining skills is 3.4 billion... Not a chance. That is over 12 million per point of skill.

Yup we did, 17 years ago (give or take). Not the same UO anymore. Not being able to buy skills is a ship that sailed along time ago.

I agree with posters from other threads who have pointed out most of UO current player base has shifted to folks who have more disposable income and less time to play than when we started 17 years ago. No one is proposing that the ability to work skills the old fashion way be taken away... but let's face it, most new characters are made by vets, not new players. I see no harm it letting the pay real $ to jump off with all 720 as opposed to 450.

I think perhaps we were talking about different proposals. My comments regarding cost were strictly related to a skill token to allocate all 720 skill points up to 120 skill (provided they have acquired the scrolls ingame).

Ya, the beast master token idea would need to be super expensive... Not sure $700 would be high enough!

That scene is every EM event I have been to in a nutshell. But why I would want to start off with a 720 character from the start is that people I now play with are already to that level. They are already asking when I can start joining in on Champ hunts. Yeah,I am not taking an adept-level warrior into a champ spawn. It would be unfair for one of my new guild mates to babysit me or have to res me every few minutes.

ProfessionalCampaign Patron

Yup we did, 17 years ago (give or take). Not the same UO anymore. Not being able to buy skills is a ship that sailed along time ago.

I agree with posters from other threads who have pointed out most of UO current player base has shifted to folks who have more disposable income and less time to play than when we started 17 years ago. No one is proposing that the ability to work skills the old fashion way be taken away... but let's face it, most new characters are made by vets, not new players. I see no harm it letting the pay real $ to jump off with all 720 as opposed to 450.

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Well man, we will probably just disagree. Most vets already know how to easily work skills up, let alone from 90 points that the mythic tokens give. Though, I will agree that the advanced char token is now worthless.

For example I just made a mage that took less than a couple days to train. But, on the other hand, I am a minority and Mesanna is not known to cater to them. So rest assured these will probably be out before long.

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

The cost for such a token, one that gave someone instant 720 skills to allocate as one pleases, should cost an astronomically high amount of money.

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Why ? Are you basing that off of the amount of time YOU spent raising skills ? What does that have to do with anyone else starting the game ? I've worked tons of skills and spent hours and hours just like everyone else, but I don't think anyone else should be charged an "astronomical" amount of money based on how hard I myself had it.

Well man, we will probably just disagree. Most vets already know how to easily work skills up, let alone from 90 points that the mythic tokens give. Though, I will agree that the advanced char token is now worthless.

For example I just made a mage that took less than a couple days to train. But, on the other hand, I am a minority and Mesanna is not known to cater to them. So rest assured these will probably be out before long.

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So what potential downside would there have been if you had the option of spending a few extra $ and just got to have the skills you wanted instead of spending a couple days to train.

No new player is just going to start the game with a fully skilled character and just get right out and play... At least not without help. There are too many other factors... Suits, books, powerscrolls, etc. The players who would benefit the most are vets who already have all that ready. I would much rather give them the option to spend a few days playing instead of a few days training.

Stratics VeteranCampaign Supporter

Well, now that we're considering changing game mechanics that have been in place for 15 years, another option is to increase the gain rate for skills above GM, so you don't have to keep clicking for hours on end just to gain a point. Building a character is actually fun up to until GM, seeing those regular gains, and then it just gets to be where you're macroing while reading a book or watching a movie (or just clicking - I don't know a way to macro imbuing or taming). How much sense does that make, really, other than increasing the market for pink scrolls?

ProfessionalCampaign Patron

So what potential downside would there have been if you had the option of spending a few extra $ and just got to have the skills you wanted instead of spending a couple days to train.

No new player is just going to start the game with a fully skilled character and just get right out and play... At least not without help. There are too many other factors... Suits, books, powerscrolls, etc. The players who would benefit the most are vets who already have all that ready. I would much rather give them the option to spend a few days playing instead of a few days training.

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This depends if you are going to allow them to go to straight to 120 without power scrolls or not. That would take a huge toll on the dynamics of the game.

Why grind champ spawns or buy, sell, trade scrolls at all then? This weakens the economy, reduces pvp , etc etc. But really, they already went as far as the mythic token, I don't see them stopping there.

I've been a GM of a few other games where I've seen ALL the items buyable like in this scenario and people ultimately get bored and leave because buying the items is pretty much endgame, where others spend time playing the game and perhaps purchasing other things. The other side is other's leave the game because the players who just pay cash end up on top because you cant compete grinding vs cash unless you have hours and hours to kill.

Think of how everyone trains, or gets items to train through imbuing etc. And maybe not everyone will take the easy way out but been there done that and I already know how it turns out in the end. In this case, suddenly imbuing ingredients may go down in price because of low demand, etc etc.

This depends if you are going to allow them to go to straight to 120 without power scrolls or not. That would take a huge toll on the dynamics of the game.

Why grind champ spawns or buy, sell, trade scrolls at all then? This weakens the economy, reduces pvp , etc etc. But really, they already went as far as the mythic token, I don't see them stopping there.

I've been a GM of a few other games where I've seen ALL the items buyable like in this scenario and people ultimately get bored and leave because buying the items is pretty much endgame, where others spend time playing the game and perhaps purchasing other things. The other side is other's leave the game because the players who just pay cash end up on top because you cant compete grinding vs cash unless you have hours and hours to kill.

Think of how everyone trains, or gets items to train through imbuing etc. And maybe not everyone will take the easy way out but been there done that and I already know how it turns out in the end. In this case, suddenly imbuing ingredients may go down in price because of low demand, etc etc.

Just something to think about I guess.

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I definitely would require the scrolls be acquired ingame. I think these kinds of tokens would actually increase demand for them. But I don't see how giving characters skills affects gear. I mean the demand for wolf spiders might go down...

the most recent blaze on alt sold for 1.1 billion, (insane I know but true)
Dread's prices are not significant since they will be obsolete shortly ( wait for it)
Never seen a dragon as described...but I am guessing 300-400 mill.

Stratics Veteran

The cost for such a token, one that gave someone instant 720 skills to allocate as one pleases, should cost an astronomically high amount of money.

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the op, and think most current gamers would agree that the cost of a mythic token IS an astronomical amount.

10 or even 5 years ago i would highly oppose creation of instan characters via token. However, the game is so casual now, marketed to an aging player base with little time, economy such that "easy mode" items like pinks are only on 1 server, that yes an instant character token makes perfect sense now. problem with mythic is you use it and still have to invest hourts of training or hundreds of mils gold for pinks to get the final character. In short, mythic token is outdated for the direction the devs have decided to take the game in recent years.

I only buy them when they are on sale though I need them because they are too expensive otherwise. If they were 15-20 I'd probably buy them a lot more often. But I just have trouble with spending 25 bucks on one little item.

I understand why the advanced character tokens are cheaper.. they suck.

Stratics VeteranCampaign Supporter

the op, and think most current gamers would agree that the cost of a mythic token IS an astronomical amount.

10 or even 5 years ago i would highly oppose creation of instan characters via token. However, the game is so casual now, marketed to an aging player base with little time, economy such that "easy mode" items like pinks are only on 1 server, that yes an instant character token makes perfect sense now. problem with mythic is you use it and still have to invest hourts of training or hundreds of mils gold for pinks to get the final character. In short, mythic token is outdated for the direction the devs have decided to take the game in recent years.

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